John and the Hole: A surreal family drama designed to confuse
Some films signal their intentions from the beginning: good vs evil, a love story, or a hero out to save the world. Then there are films like indie thriller John and The Hole, which leave almost every frame open to interpretation.
Having just starred in Sean Durkin’s drama The Nest, Charlie Shotwell once again explores family dysfunction as John, the curious youngest child of a wealthy but disconnected family. The teenager is a promising tennis player, rarely scolded by his mother (Jennifer Ehle) or father (Michael C Hall). With no awareness of consequence, John drugs his parents and elder sister (Taissa Farmiga), dropping them in an unfinished bunker built on the edge of their property. He holds them there, dropping enough food and water for them to survive, but ignoring their pleas for release as he enjoys a life of independence. As the days wear on, John tests the limits of his new found freedom, while his family contend with an uncertain fate.
Pascual Sisto’s debut feature challenges you to make sense of what’s happening, with three storylines beginning to emerge. The most fleshed out is John’s, with the camera following his emotionless view of the world, treating his fellow humans like insects being burned under a magnifying glass. The 14-year-old Shotwell is magnificent in his ability to keep John from coming across as sinister. He is, as far as you can tell, a boy with no awareness of the gravity of what he is doing. Whether trying to drown his best friend in a childish game gone wrong, or handing him a giant wad of cash to spend on whatever he wants, his actions are motivated by extreme curiosity rather than malice.
At least, that’s as much as I could glean. There are huge holes of missing information, intentionally left blank for you to draw your own conclusions. Some of it’s fun – you can assume a lot of subtext in Hall, covered in dirt, realising he’d never truly been hungry before, suggesting the whole mess is born of generational affluenza. But other parts are baffling, such as a subplot involving a mother (Georgia Lyman) leaving her young daughter (Samantha LeBretton), leading you to expect a revelation that never comes.
Ending on a giant question mark, some will conclude that a big portion of the film is missing, while others will delight in the mystery.